


Counting until ten

by WickedBee



Series: Paper and Weapon [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beta Read, Chuunin Exams, Civilians exist, Gen, Haruno Sakura-centric, Konoha Crush, Not Canon Compliant, Sakura remembers procedures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 03:03:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14535270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WickedBee/pseuds/WickedBee
Summary: Mebuki Haruno taught her daughter numbers through the stories of her own life. It’s a useful lesson Sakura never forgets, and she is glad to rely on it when the Invasion is taking place.One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten...(Wrong. Start again.)





	Counting until ten

**Author's Note:**

> Now, beta-ed by sake2000!

It’s a crude thing, like the sun burning and shining until it overwhelms her senses. It is the only way Sakura could describe the genjutsu. She can tell it is a general kind of jutsu with just one command: sleep. But it feels… _wrong_. Sakura is very awake after all. Being suddenly sleepy is rather alarming. So she feigns being asleep, and if she hides her hands within her dress, no one is none the wiser. Genjutsu can be dispelled by fluctuating chakra or by feeling pain. A simple kai could do, but-

 

(“Remember.”

 

Iruka-sensei is very serious here, and she’s hungry because she needs to have a slim form otherwise Sasuke will never look at her. So what if she skips breakfast? It is not like someone will notice. Her stomach is clawing at itself, but her teacher is about to say something important. Sakura can cope with hunger, but not with losing information just because she was lost in her thoughts.

 

“If you are in a situation which you have no idea about, go with the flow. Let’s say there is a big kidnapping happening and you somehow get involved in it too? Do not engage. Do not attract attention to yourself. Observe your surroundings. Analyse your enemies, their patterns. Find weakness and exploit it. If there is another ninja of a superior rank with you, inform them of your findings and wait for orders. If not, try to find a way around it. I repeat: **do not engage until you have grasped the situation. Do not attract attention. Do. Not. Engage.”** )

 

_One, two, three. Observe. Look at everything with old eyes, then, with new eyes. I learned there were different ways to paint silk just because I was looking at kimonos and saw they were different even if their appearance were nearly the same. Nearly, and let me tell you, the price of one is sometimes four times than the other._

 

But a genjutsu is a ninja thing to do, and a kai will attract the attention of whoever cast it, of whoever is awake. She cannot do this. So she scratches her skin instead, strong enough to draw blood even if she feels sluggish. The effect is instantaneous for she cannot feel the genjutsu anymore. Excellent. Now, she has to assess her situation.

 

Sakura keeps her muscles relaxed and does not move. The human eye tracks movement most easily after all. There are clashes in the background, and she is pretty sure there is shouting too. Things are falling down as well. “ Metal clashes. I think there is some kind of battle going on, Outer. _Yes, I think you are right, Inner. But the only people battling were Gaara and Sasuke-kun, right?_ Yeah, but I don’t think that is the case anymore. There’s too much screaming and hitting sounds. Pretty sure there is some smoke somewhere too. The smell is horrible. And Gaara doesn't carry any other weapon besides his sand. What do we have with us right now? _Common explosive tags, our own explosive tags, kunai. Some senbon, an empty storage scroll, three common smoke bombs, and four of our personalized ones._ Could be worse. Open our eyes and don’t move. 

 

Slowly with caution, Sakura does as Inner says. There are Konoha-nin fighting, and she is quite certain the enemy is carrying a Sound headband. Okay, so Oto is attacking them. Alright, that she can deal with. Surely Suna will help Konoha; they did become allies after the last war.

Except that is not right. Someone with the Suna headband gutted another ninja, and this ninja is not an Oto-nin. Puppets, which she is sure are a common Suna weapon, are being used to kill ninjas from her Village. What the real _fuck?_ Outer, this is some deep, fucked up shit, mind you. _Hum, yes. Seems that this is some kind of attack from an alliance between Oto and Suna. It’s too organized to be random._ But why now? Why attack in the last match? Why specifically in the middle of Sasuke-kun’s match? _No idea. Where is Sasuke-kun anyway?_ Her eyes try to find the boy, but she has no luck. He appears to have vanished. Kakashi-sensei seems to be saying something to Naruto and Shikamaru before disappearing out of her sights. He is fighting, sure, like every other ninja that is awake is as well. But not everyone is awake.

 

_Four, five, six. Choose. You can always choose. Did you know, daughter, that I learned how to carve because I thought the sculptures for sale were ugly? It was a choice then because for me, there was something not right. I could have sat and accepted these sculptures. Or maybe have looked for others. Maybe go in another country and bought their sculptures. Or I could have destroyed the ugly sculptures, they were right there. You don’t need to choose, and that is a choice in itself too._

 

Sakura is aware she is shaking and that snakes are curling in her stomach. It is like being in the Forest of Death, like meeting Orochimaru, like being in Wave with everything around her being Mist and a missing-nin wanting to kill her charge and being armed with just kunai, nevermind her valour is her brain and not her fighting skills.

 

She closes her eyes and takes some deep breaths. She is afraid, that much is clear. But she has to do something. It is her duty to her Village, even if it means fighting monsters, dolls and things she can only hear, even if it means _dying_. She doesn't want to, but it is her duty as a Konoha ninja. She will die, for she has no chance in this invasion, but she will die in glory, in honor, following her duty.

 

No no NO. Fuck it, Outer, we aren’t going to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good or some _bullshit_ like that. We are genin. FUCKING GENIN. And maybe we are becoming better, but we are still a simple genin. It hasn’t even been a year since we graduated! _I know, but…we have to do something. We cannot just feign sleep and wait until someone kills us. It’s just… if we are dying anyway, it might as well be for Konoha, don’t you think?_ Better not die at all! Brave, reckless things, doing flawless, courageous acts is not our area of expertise! Let Sasuke-kun and Naruto do that. Our strengths lie in other things. **(** **We are not brave, we are not strong, but we have our own set of skills.)** _You… you are right._ Course I am! You can bet on it, tcha!

 

Now, the procedure for genin, in the case of natural disasters or some kind of emergency in the Village, is to direct civilians to shelters. And this is something that Sakura can do of course, but there is no way for her to escape unnoticed. She will have to create a big distraction, but that is difficult with just three smoke bombs. That’s it. If she survives, she will be carrying storage scrolls with everything she could ever need from now on. If only some of her fellow ninjas were awake, Sakura could have escaped in the confusion. But she does not have enough chakra to affect all of them. Neither can she scratch them until they wake up.

 

She has to choose: wake some of them up and risk being seen, or try to escape and let them die? She cannot see the difference between civilians and ninja when most of them are wearing the same clothes, so there is a high chance she could wake up someone who would be of no use in the fight anyway. Just her luck. Must be some kind of Team Seven curse...

 

_Seven, eight, nine. You don’t need to stick to the choices you make, Sakura. I made my hair white when I was a teenager because I wanted to appear wise. Even applied makeup to look older than I was. Look, teenagers make shitty decisions alright? Next day, I thought it was horrible and didn’t want it anymore. Painted my hair yellow again, but it wasn’t the same natural blonde I had. Of course, there are always consequences to our choices, but what of it? Everything has consequences. It’s just the way life is._

 

But there’s another way, isn’t there? She just has to make enough noise to wake up everyone. The only thing is, it will be… well, difficult to make it go unnoticed. And her actions could prejudice the fights happening. But that’s it, no? If none of these battling ninjas are going to do something, then Sakura will. If no one cares about her or the other ninjas affected by genjutsu, then they don’t deserve her consideration. Worse, _there are_ ** _civilians_** _here._ The Daimyo and most of his court have probably escaped by now, but if no one is going to look out for these remaining, defenseless people in the arena, then Sakura _will_. Because hey, maybe she isn’t brave or daring, but she doesn’t need to be. She just needs to be a bit creative and to ignore everything else. To give herself a focused mind just like she did countless times before.

 

Mind made, she explodes one of the common smoking bombs next to herself. It will wake up the people nearby (having smoke in one’s lungs is very unpleasant, and it does have a distinctive smell after all), but it will not be enough. She knows it, just like how she also knows she does not have much time left to lose. So Sakura attaches some of her own explosive scrolls (the special ones, the ones she made because she is going to _own_ her name and because pink smoke is flashy. To complete the image, there is a cherry blossom smell in it. It was her father’s idea) to a handful of kunai and throws them in the arena.

 

Before the initial smoke starts dissipating, she immediately begins to run. The explosion occurs a second earlier than expected, but it gives her time enough to make herself scarce. It is highly probable she affected some of Konoha ninja, but most of them are in all likelihood jounin and chūnin, so they should be adaptable enough to survive it. Otherwise, how else would they have gotten their rank?

 

_Ten. Oh darling, the only person who can truly define you is yourself. Not me, not your father, and definitely not the rest of Haruno family. So remember,  daughter, the only person with a saying in your actions is you. I married a fisherman’s son even if my Mother disapproved of it, and I am okay with that. It was my life, not hers._

 

So Sakura runs, runs, _runs_ . These civilians are going to arrive in the shelters if she can help them. And she will help them no matter what. It is her choice, her action. Maybe she will not save everyone, but gods, she will _try_.

 

( _"Do you remember how to count now, Sakura?"_  
  
_"Yes, mama!"_  
  
_"Promise me you will not forget."_  
  
_"Of course not!")_


End file.
